ALG: Tanning Tax Compliance Costs as Much as $120 million Annually, 6,000 jobs

August 31st, 2010, Fairfax, VA—The Obama Administration has significantly underestimated the paperwork and compliance costs on businesses associated with the 10 percent tanning excise tax in Obamacare, according to a government watchdog.

“Just filling out the paperwork alone will cost the tanning industry anywhere from $60 million to $120 million annually, and as much as 6,000 jobs. That’s not even counting the burden that the tax itself will put upon these businesses,” Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Bill Wilson noted. His group’sObamacareWatcher.org has filed comments on the proposed regulation by the IRSthat tanning salons must fill out Form 720 in complying with the tax.

“The industry as a whole will spend from 924,000 to 1.84 million hours filling out these forms,” Wilson added. His comments note that Forms 720 are typically used for “Domestic petroleum oil spill tax,” “Ozone depleting chemicals,” “Local telephone service and teletypewriter exchange service,”
“Use of international air travel facilities,” “Aviation gasoline,” “Coal-Underground mined,” and “Arrow shafts.”

Wilson wrote, “There is no good reason to lump the small business owners who run tanning salons into a category of multi-national corporations that use international travel facilities.” He recommended that no special form be used “until a reasonable estimate of the costs is given to and approved by the Office of Management and Budget.”

The comments continued, “This new estimate must include detailed analysis so that affected members of the regulated community are on notice as to how the Department calculated the new burden it is now putting on them.”

With as many as 20,000 new regulations in the works for the implementation of Obamacare, Americans for Limited Government (ALG) Research Foundation recently launched ObamacareWatcher.org to keep track of the most damaging ones.

“ObamacareWatcher.org aims to keep the public informed about what is being proposed on the bureaucratic level to implement the national health care system, and to make it easy for activists to submit comments on proposed harmful regulations that will restrict the choices individuals can make about their doctors and their health care,” said Don Todd, ALG’s Research Director.

Wilson concluded, “The bureaucrats are threatening to make Obamacare, as bad as it is, even worse. The paperwork burden being imposed by the 10 percent tanning excise tax’s Form 720 is not even the tip of the iceberg, but it is nonetheless still critical that it be stopped. These are real costs being imposed on American businesses, and they will result in real job losses.”